he assurance to summon a diet of the nobles to
confirm this decree which defrauded them of their time-honored rights.
The nobles who were summoned, terrified, instead of obeying, fled into
Transylvania. The despot then issued an insulting and menacing
proclamation, declaring that the power he exercised he received from
God, and calling upon all to manifest implicit submission under peril of
his vengeance. He then extorted a large contribution of money from the
kingdom, and quartered upon the inhabitants thirty thousand troops to
awe them into subjection.

This proclamation was immediately followed by another, changing the
whole form of government of the kingdom, and establishing an unlimited
despotism. He then moved vigorously for the extirpation of the
Protestant religion. The Protestant pastors were silenced; courts were
instituted for the suppression of heresy; two hundred and fifty
Protestant ministers were sentenced to be burned at the stake, and then,
as an act of extraordinary clemency, on the part of the despot, their
punishment was commuted to hard labor in the galleys for life. All the
nameless horrors of inquisitorial cruelty desolated the land.

Catholics and Protestants were alike driven to despair by these civil
and religious outrages. They combined, and were aided both by France and
Turkey; not that France and Turkey loved justice and humanity, but they
hated the house of Austria, and wished to weaken its power, that they
might enrich themselves by the spoils. A noble chief, Emeric Tekeli, who
had fled from Hungary to Poland, and who hated Austria as Hannibal hated
Rome, was invested with the command of the Hungarian patriots. Victory
followed his standard, until the emperor, threatened with entire
expulsion from the kingdom, offered to reestablish the ancient laws
which he had abrogated, and to restore to the Hungarians all those civil
and religious privileges of which he had so ruthlessly defrauded them.

But the Hungarians were no longer to be deceived by his perfidious
promises. They continued the war; and the sultan sent an army of two
hundred thousand men to cooperate with Tekeli. The emperor, unable to
meet so formidable an army, abandoned his garrisons, and, retiring from
the distant parts of the kingdom, concentrated his troops at Presburg.
But with all his efforts, he was able to raise an army of only forty
thousand men. The Duke of Lorraine, who was intrusted with the command
of the imperial